Corona Councilman (soon to be State Senator) Hiram Monserrate was jailed for a short time on Friday, charged with slashing his girlfriend Karla Giraldo in his Elmhurst apartment after an apparent argument. It all happened after they attended Queens Democratic Party leader Joe Crowley’s Christmas party at the Queens Museum of Art. Hundreds of people saw them together at the party and there were conflicting reports on what happened at the party and in their apartment. It seems that they now might have their story straight just three days after the incident, but there is more to come and things are heating up.

The story now is not that they fought over someone mistaking her for another girlfriend at the party and he later slashed her with a broken glass. It’s not that he was bringing her water, stumbled, and the glass broke on her face. No – now it’s that he might have found her with drugs he did not know about and they struggled, then he accidentally fell into her face with a glass that was broken.

The supporters and detractors are lined up around 37th Avenue at 82nd Street to tell their story of how he is a great guy or how he is a crook. He is indeed being charged with a felony at this point.

What is true is that she has a gash that required 20 stitches to fix. He apparently caused it and only the two of them know what really happened. He should not be made into a criminal; unfortunate incidents that could have been avoided happen to us all.

However, people with whom he apparently confided in made an unfortunate mistake in trying to clear his name this past weekend. They brought “drugs” into the situation. It has been reported that she had drugs in his apartment, which might have initiated that fight. It’s going to be hard to convince voters that if his girlfriend had drugs, the councilman did not know about it. It’s not like she was a stranger on the street who he caught with drugs and he came to the rescue like Underdog. She was his girlfriend. But even more important to the case, by claiming that she had drugs, smearing her name in an attempt to protect him might just backfire. She now might not be so inclined to protect him, and start telling what really happened in the apartment and what led to her injury. Stay tuned.